In order to protect electrical loads, e.g. motors, use is routinely made of a circuit breaker having a tripper with time delay for overload protection and a tripper without time delay for short-circuit protection. Because the switch latch of the circuit breaker is mechanically coupled to the trippers, the trippers can interrupt the circuit by opening switching contacts automatically and effect the disconnection of the electrical load. The switching contacts can also be opened or closed manually by means of a handle of the circuit breaker, the handle being mechanically coupled to the switch latch or integrated in the switch latch. At the same time, the ON state (circuit breaker switched on) and the OFF state (circuit breaker switched off) are visible by virtue of the position of the handle.
It is already known that a circuit breaker has a handle which is arranged outside of the switch housing. The handle is moved to an intermediate position, also known as a tripped position, between ON and OFF positions if the circuit breaker is disconnected by a tripper in order to protect against overload or short circuit. In this case only the disconnection of the circuit breaker is shown by the position of the handle, but it is not possible to distinguish between overload and short circuit. In order to make the cause identifiable, the tripper that caused the trip is visibly indicated in some devices by means of a lamp, an attachable add-on module, or an integrated additional display. The use of an attachable add-on module or an integrated additional display is unfavorable in terms of the manufacturing costs of circuit breakers and hinders the simplification of the structure or the miniaturization of the size of circuit breakers.